Keith’s Tech Blog

Apple envy

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:19:42 +0000

I would first like to start this blog entry with a confession. Of the three Apple gadgets I said I would never buy, I now own one of them and have starting to lust after the other two! After trying out what seemed like an endless series of wireless routers with little success (more on that another time), I finally decided to plump for an Apple AirPort Extreme, which I bought second-hand on eBay. What I found out about the Extreme that I didn’t know before is that it’s one of the few wireless base stations on the market that can operate in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency ranges, making it ideal for situations where there is a lot of interference from other networks and wireless devices. That said, in practice I found that the range I achieved in practice when using the 2.4GHz band was much better than at 5GHz (or so AirPort Radar tells me) and so decided to stick with the former, although I am now using 802.11n, rather than the older 802.11g standard, which in theory would give me a much faster wireless connection if only I owned more than one 802.11n-compatible device! Oh well, at least my home network is a little faster for accessing the internet and more future-proof than before…

Having used the AirPort Extreme for some time now, I found it to be extremely reliable and simple to set up. The support for USB printing and wireless disk sharing is an extremely welcome extra (or it will be, just as soon as Apple sort out wirelessly backing up to a network drive with Time Machine). Still, with the impending release of the Time Capsule with its built-in hard drive, I’m starting to warm to Apple’s wireless networking strategy a little, although I still feel that these devices are somewhat overpriced in the UK, especially given the absence of a built-in modem or USB modem compatibility (the latter being far more common in the UK than Ethernet modems). Wireless reception is as good as any unit that I’ve tried, which is quite a few, and the supplied AirPort Utility is a nice touch, and much nicer to use than the web-based interfaces that most wireless access points offer. In other words, I retract my former harsh words about the unit and would recommend it to anyone who’s in the market for a wireless access point but that already has (or is happy to buy) a separate DSL or ADSL modem.

The second Apple product that I find myself lusting after is the newly updated Apple TV, which brings movie downloading capabilities for North American users (although the rest of the world will, as usual, have to wait a while longer). With the US price of the Apple TV having dropped to just $229 for the basic model, I can really see it taking off, although I hope that the movie rental facility will also be usable on any PC or Mac that runs iTunes. Current reports are that this won’t be the case, although no doubt this is due to Apple’s wanting to sell more Apple TV units, and perhaps because of DRM concerns from the content providers. Nevertheless, the revamped software for the Apple TV looks pretty impressive and the ability to start watching a movie almost immediately you start downloading is a killer feature—provided that you have a sufficiently fast internet connection to allow real-time downloads, that is. Better still is the provision of 720p high definition movies with full Dolby 5.1 surround sound, which is arguably what Apple should have offered in the first place, but definitely a step in the right direction for those lucky enough to own a HDTV (again, this would work well with many computer monitors, such as Apple’s existing iMac models, so let’s hope that they allow us to watch movies in iTunes too!). What’s particularly impressive is that Apple were able to implement all of the required changes entirely in software without any alteration to the Apple TV hardware. This means that early adopters will be able to upgrade their Apple TVs to use the new service via a free download that will be available in a few weeks time. Suddenly, Apple TV has gone from being a rather lacklustre iTunes-in-a-box to a home entertainment centre, and I can see it really taking off once the movie download service is up and running. All of which leads me to think: I WANT ONE!

The other device that I’m now rather taken with is the iPod touch. I was happy to see that Apple have finally decided to add e-mail and widget support to the new iPod touch as standard, although there is still no built-in chat client or wireless music streaming. Although all of these features probably should have been in right from the start, the addition of e-mail marks a shift in treating the iPod touch device as merely another portable music player to a more fully fledged digital wireless platform—a change that will become even more apparent once the full software development kit is released later this year. No doubt we will see a veritable plethora of new wireless and media applications from third-party developers in the not too distant future. With the iPod touch and iPhone both being Mac OS X based, this should open up a whole new range of possibilities, both on the software side and for new hardware form factors, such as a large screen portable media player and/or tablet based computer based upon similar technology to the existing iPhone. All of which makes the iPod touch and iPhone suddenly look a lot more interesting…

At this point, I should also put in a small mention for the iPod classic, which I finally decided to plump for while I wait (probably a long time!) for a low-cost, high-capacity, 3G pay-as-you-go version of the iPhone. Despite a corrupt hard disk that initially caused it to lock up every few minutes after syncing it with iTunes, a quick call to Apple technical support sorted that out and I was able to transfer all my music and photos to it without any problems. Although the sound quality is nothing to write home about, especially when played via the supplied earbud-style headphones, I love being able to hold my entire music collection in the palm of my hand, and find the iPod particularly good for watching TV shows that I’ve recorded on my computer via a USB digital tuner. Unfortunately, this currently requires converting and copying the files to my iTunes library, which is a pain and quite time consuming, but other than that I’m very happy with it. I even managed to pick up an iPod connection kit including dock, remote control, cables and power supply for a measly £35 in the January sales at Argos, which is great for watching QuickTime content on a TV or playback via a stereo. (Apple TV? Who needs it!)

Finally, of course, there was the recent announcement of the much anticipated MacBook Air. To some, an underpowered, overpriced piece of eye-candy, to others, a must-have piece of portable computing heaven. Whilst I have my reservations about the very deliberate trade-offs of the MacBook Air design (I would have much rather seen a smaller and thicker sub-notebook form factor with a low voltage CPU and longer battery life) there’s no doubt that it has the unmistakable wow-factor that has long been missing from the laptop market, pretty much ever since Apple released the original titanium PowerBook. With the MacBook Air, Apple has once again raised the bar on what portable computers should look and feel like, and I look forward to seeing where they take the design concept in the years ahead. Will we see sleeker, more curvaceous versions of other members of the MacBook family, replete with speedy SSD drives, or will the Air continue to be in a class of its own? Who knows, but there will always be a market for aspirational high-end laptops, even if they don’t sell the same bucketloads as the existing MacBook and MacBook Pros models (although time will tell). By the way, is it just me, or does the MacBook Air’s screen look really goofy with that wide border around it? Not that it stops me wanting one, although I can’t even remotely justify and/or afford it!

All of which brings me to the question that I originally wanted to raise in this blog: exactly who is the MacBook Air targeted at? Given the number of people who claim that they would never buy one because it’s too expensive, lacks a built-in optical drive, Ethernet port, etc. etc. (actually, I think they’re all lying and overcome with jealousy!), you’d be forgiven for thinking that Apple have designed an incredibly beautiful and slimline white elephant, rather than a commercially successful laptop. My own suspicion is that the market that Apple have deliberately targeted the Air at is the executive user or travelling businessperson. Companies often design a product around one particular user profile, which results in a more streamlined and successful design, rather than a failed attempt to please everybody, and when you think of it, the Air is just the ticket for the busy executive out on the road who wants a flash and lightweight laptop capable of reading e-mail, web browsing, running MS Office, PowerPoint presentations, and not much else. Not that the MacBook Air isn’t capable of anything else, of course, but this isn’t a market where raw processor power is the main issue, unlike, say, music production, video editing or gaming, where every CPU cycle counts. Moreover, the relatively high cost of the Air, whilst prohibitive for many users, is less of an issue for a style-conscious executive or member of the board, who would be more likely to buy an aspirational laptop than a good value for money workhorse. Of course, the MacBook Air will (and does) appeal to many of the rest of us, but it all just seems too good a fit to be coincidental…

What’s interesting about this suggestion is not what it means for Apple’s laptop sales, but for its uptake in the business sector, which at present is very much dominated by Windows PCs (even more so than the home market). Many corporate IT departments are wary of embracing new computer platforms as it makes their jobs all the more difficult, but (and this is my theory) if Apple is able to infiltrate such companies from the top down, as it were, such departments will have no choice but to improve their support for Mac products. I mean, they can hardly say no the CEO asking them to set up e-mail for his brand new MacBook Air, can they? It could just cost them their job. In short, I think that the MacBook Air is (if you’ll forgive the obvious metaphor) a wedge into the corporate market, upon the back of which Apple hopes to boost its acceptability in the business sector generally. The styling of the machine is, like the new iMacs, designed to appeal to the more seriously minded user, unlike the previous generations of iMac that always had a slightly toy-like feel with all that glossy white plastic—friendly but not quite right for the office. With the MacBook Air and aluminium iMac, there’s no mistaking it: this computer means business, and you can take that as literally as you like. The same is true of OS X Leopard, which has undergone a minor makeover that arguably makes it a little more lean, mean and businesslike—or, to coin a phrase, no more Mister nice computer.

So, do any of the above developments show that Apple has lost touch with its user base? Quite the opposite. I think that Apple has been listening very careful to what both existing and potential users have been telling it, which has been “movies”, “mail” and “mobile productivity”, respectively. Of course the MacBook Air isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but that’s precisely the point. It’s designed to do a particular job very, very well, and if it succeeds in that, then it might just transform the way that many businesses see the Macintosh platform for good; i.e. the Mac will finally become accepted in the workplace. In the meantime, we can look forward to seeing some exciting media based products based on the mobile OS X development platform real soon now, and there are no doubt future developments with touch-screens and new form factors in the works as we speak. It’s going to be another interesting year for Apple watchers everywhere…

Living with Leopard

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:19:34 +0000

Having used Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, for some time now, I thought I’d record some of my general impressions, as well as list a few of the things that I’d like to see in the next major update (yes, I know it’s still a long way off!).

Whilst not as revolutionary as the previous major Mac OS release, which introduced Spotlight searching and Widgets to the world, Leopard does have a bunch of genuinely useful new features — the most conspicuous of these being Time Machine, Stacks and Spaces. The latter I find to be particularly useful in organising my desktop since it allows different applications to be placed in different virtual ‘spaces’, making it easier to multitask without having too much distracting clutter lying around. Spaces is particularly good if you are using a machine with a smaller display size, such as a laptop, as it effective multiplies the size of your available desktop by a factor of n. With characteristic Apple style, transitions between virtual workspaces take place with an elegant ‘swoosh’ as windows zoom out of the way to reveal the new space whilst icons in the underlying Finder window remain static. It’s a nice touch, and like other visual effects in Leopard I sometimes find myself invoking the feature just to admire the visuals (sad, I know!). Time Machine is particularly stunning with the background starfield and spiralling clouds of mist being a pleasure to behold!

Aside from the major headline features, there are a host of more minor changes lurking beneath the surface. Indeed, there seem to be few features and applications that have escaped some kind of user interface or functionality makeover in OS X 10.5. Some of those I particularly like include the way that the Disk Utility now allows partition sizes to be adjusted dynamically without having to reformat your entire drive (although for some reason this doesn’t seem to interact well with the Boot Camp partition process — not that I would want to run Windows on my Mac anyway!), the new multi-threaded Finder which no longer hangs when you become disconnected from another server or try to eject your iDisk (a godsend if you regularly work with multiple computers), the ability to connect to and browse other machines directly from any Finder window (which is so intuitive that wonder why it didn’t always work this way!), screen sharing in the Finder and iChat (very slick and great for administering remote computers), much faster Spotlight searching, plus minor changes the printing system that make it a lot more polished and user friendly.

Some of the other user interface changes are more subtle, such as the fact that clicking on an inactive application now just activates it rather than placing the cursor, just like it did in the old days (although this still seems to vary somewhat between apps). The new unified window appearance gives a more professional look to the user interface and, even though I miss the old brushed metal appearance, the new look is pleasantly clean and functional, and closely matches the aluminium enclosures of the latest Macs. There are still some discrepancies in toolbar styles though, with Mail and Preview sporting ugly lozenge-shaped buttons whilst Safari retains its own unique look, but in general Leopard gives the impression of a solid, finished and mature operating system, unlike previous releases which have always seemed a little toy-like. Gone are the old pin-striped menus and modal dialogues, replaced with a new frosted glass look, which is a nice touch and somewhat reminiscent of Windows Vista. The translucent menu bar takes a bit of getting used to, but I have to say that I think the Apple designers made the right call here as it focuses attention back on where it ought to be: on the contents of your documents. Even the subtle ‘lights’ on the dock to show currently running applications work well and are easy to pick out when you need to whilst not unduly distracting from the work in hand. The fact that they look like lights also makes you want to quit unused applications more regularly so that your Dock isn’t lit up like a Christmas tree — a nice visual prompt to help you cut down on virtual memory usage!

Every major release of an OS has an effect on the overall ‘feel’ of the operating system, and in this OS X Leopard is no exception. My general impression is of a much more businesslike and serious OS, which makes me wonder whether Apple are deliberately targeting the corporate market in order to expand their user base (the design and pricing of the new MacBook Air would tend to confirm this hypothesis). Visually, the use of a lot more black in the form of popup windows and head-up displays gives Leopard a much darker and more menacing appearance than any of its predecessors — something which is exacerbated when using the new iMac, which has a strong black border around its distinctly cinematic display. And, for the first time, the corners of the screen are actually square, rather than the more aesthetically pleasing rounded corners that have graced all previous releases of Mac OS. How times have changed! If I was to be really picky then I’d say that Leopard looks slightly less pixel-perfect than Tiger, which gave the impression of having been lovingly hand-crafted, although you quickly get used to the new look. I suspect that this may have something to do with the new resolution independent technology, support for which is currently more or less invisible, but which will eventually allow windows to be zoomed in and out without any loss of resolution — 3D desktop windows anybody? Some of the new menu bar icons suggest that Leopard is also designed to work with much lower resolution displays, which may offer some clues as to what Apple has planned for 2008 and beyond…

I’d like to finish this post with a personal wish-list of things that didn’t make it into Leopard, but that I hope to see in a future release of Mac OS X, although no doubt that will not appear until well into next year. Some of these are — in my opinion, at least — no brainers whilst others would just make Mac OS X just that little bit nicer to use. In general, it’s difficult to know where Apple will go from here since OS X Leopard just seems so, well, finished, but no doubt we’ll see some exciting innovations driven by new form factors and technologies such as the advent of full-size multi-touch displays and trackpads, which will augment if not totally replace the traditional methods of user interaction, such as the mechanical keyboard and mouse that have become ubiquitous since the early days of desktop computing at the famous Xeroc PARC.

Animations everywhere! The addition of Core Animation to Mac OS X should make it easy to add lots more sexy looking animations to the OS and bundled application, creating a much more fluid and enjoyable user experience not dissimilar to the new iPhone / iPod touch. In particular, I’d like to see windows ‘float’ into view front when they gain input focus, animated window zooming effects, animated dock icon for commonly performed actions (sending/receiving mail, iCal alarms, Time Machine backups, Safari downloads, etc.), page turning effects in Preview, Safari and elsewhere, Finder windows visible ‘growing’ or ‘shrinking’ toolbar icons and sidebar whenever the toolbar button is clicked, subtly animated desktop backgrounds (I wouldn’t mind having Time Machine as my desktop background!), plus the reinstatement of the old Front Row entry and exit animations (why ever did they take these out?!).
Desktop widgets. Since the addition of widgets in Tiger, I’ve wanted to be able to drag or ‘pin’ certain widgets (e.g. a clock or calculator) to my desktop just like any other application window.* Whilst the idea of placing widgets in their own separate workspace is great for avoiding desktop clutter, sometimes I’d like a widget to be visible all the time. This could easily be added to the existing UI by allowing a user to grab hold of a widget with the mouse before exiting Dashboard, in the same way that ordinary windows can be dragged between multiple spaces, leaving it ‘pinned’ to the desktop. Additionally, by holding down a certain key combination (Command-Option?), little ‘pin’ icons could appear at the top-left corner of each widget, just like the ‘close’ icons that appear when you hold down the Option key, that could be selected to achieve the same effect. In both cases, desktop widgets would be pinned to the currently active Space, allowing multiple workspaces to be configured with a different different widgets, each of which would be opened automatically at system startup.
Document ‘piles’. In addition to having folders display as ‘stacks’ in the dock, it would be great if other folders could also be displayed in this way within the Finder so that you can easily see their content without having to open them directly. Pressing the spacebar would expand the stack, or ‘pile’, to show its contents, similar how that Quick View currently works but with multiple documents, allowing items to be opened by clicking on them, or browsing deeper into the hierarchy. This technique has already been patented by Apple a while back, so it seems like ‘stacks’ might just be the first step towards implementing such document ‘piles’ within the Mac OS X Finder.
Full FTP support in Finder. Why this hasn’t been done already I don’t know, but I would really like to be able to upload files to an FTP server directly from the Finder. Yes, I know there are third-party utilities that allow you to do this, but there really isn’t any excuse for not having it supported directly by the Finder, especially since it already allows you to browse the contents of remote servers via FTP and SFTP. Come on Apple, you know it makes sense!
Zoomable 3D windows. This is a biggie. Imagine that your desktop workspace was three dimensional and you could ‘push’ windows down into the screen and them ‘pull’ them back to the front when you wanted to work with them. It would be like having a live Exposé workspace where each window could be independently resized not just in terms of width and height but in terms of its ‘depth’ within the 3D workspace. The addition of resolution independence to OS X makes this a real possibility and opens up a whole range of new approaches for user interaction. Coupled with a multi-touch display or trackpad, this kind of interface will undoubtedly make a huge difference to the way that we interact with computers. I just hope that we see it on Mac OS X first!
Menu bar auto-hiding. I’m not really sure whether this is a good idea or not, but I’d like to be able to hide the system menu bar completely and have it automatically scroll into view when the mouse touches the relevant side of the display. Just like the system Dock, the menu bar could be configured to appear on any side of the screen, freeing up valuable screen space, although by default the menu would be constantly visible at the top of the display as usual. This suggestion is reminiscent of the way that the menu bar on the old Commodore Amiga would automatically pop into existence when the right-mouse button was held down, which I always thought was quite a nice convention, and there seems to be no particular reason why the menu bar should be constantly visible other than by convention.
Better support for non-American spoken language. Is it really necessary for the built-in voices to have an American accent? And why is there no text-to-speech and speech-to-text support for international languages? Worse still, I find that I have to speak with an American accent in order for the built-in speech software to understand me — i.e. “what is the taahm?” instead of “what is the time?” — which makes it worse than useless! It’s embarrassing enough to find yourself talking to a computer, but to have to put on a silly voice to do so is just insulting! In these days of internationalisation, it’s about time Mac OS X learned to talk in or understand an English (or Scottish!) accept, as opposed to American, not to mention being fluent in German, French, Spanish, etc…
Unified software update interface. The built-in software update facility of Mac OS X is great, but I’d like to see it extended to third-party applications as well. As it stands, each application has to implement its own software update facility, with the automatic checking for updates being configured and run independently, which can be a real nuisance (“a new version of Application X is available — would you like to install it now?”) . It would be much better if Apple operated some kind of application registry by which third-party apps could notify users that a new version is available via the existing Software Update utility, with downloads automatically taking place from the relevant server and being installed from a single app. This would make it much easier to keep your system up-to-date, reducing the number of annoying pop-ups that appear due to running old versions of software.
Integrate iChat buddies list. Why oh why oh why do my iChat contact have to appear in separate windows? I want to be able to see all of my contacts simultaneously within a single window (or menu) and to be able to contact them via my preferred messaging system (selected by dragging them into order) via a double-click. Is that really too much to ask?
Voice and/or face recognition. Maybe this is a bit far-fetched, but wouldn’t it be great if you could log in using just your voice, or by your Mac recognising you via its built-in iSight camera? iChat could update your status to reflect whether you are sitting in front of the computer or not, and the OS could prompt you to switch users whenever it recognises somebody different. This wouldn’t be the most secure method of authentication, but perfectly adequate for general home use, and incredibly cool for demos!
Peer-to-peer synchronisation. Finally, I’d love to be able to sync the contents of my iTunes library, photo albums, iWeb sites and other content between multiple Macs on my local network. Dot-Mac synchronisation is great for bookmarks, calendars and addresses, but it can’t really handle the large volumes of data required to keep media libraries in sync. Given that most (although not all) people using multiple Macs do so within a single LAN, it would make sense to allow such data to be synchronised peer-to-peer, much like contents of your iPod or Apple TV can be synchronised with your main computer via USB, Firewire or a wireless network. At the moment such content needs to be copied across manually, which is time consuming and inefficient. The ability to keep the contents of a local folder synchronised with a remote one via AFP, FTP or WebDAV straight from the Finder would also be a welcome addition, although one I suspect we’re unlikely to see any time soon since it negates much of the benefit of Apple’s existing .Mac offering (Windows briefcases anyone?). If Apple wants to be really sneaky, it could still make use of .Mac to register synchronisation information, but with the actual file transfers taking place directly from machine to another whenever they are connected together via a network connection (or even via the Internet via the ‘Back to my Mac’ facility, although that might be a bit slow). I’ve already suggested this one to Apple, so we’ll see if anything comes of it… Roll on Mac OS X Lynx, or whatever big cat they choose to name it after!

*It seems that this is already possible. See here for details.

Why I still love my iPod shuffle

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:59:53 +0100

Many moons ago, I blogged about my newly acquired first generation iPod shuffle. What blew me away about the device away was the combination of the diminutive form factor (which was quite tiny in its day, even though this has since been superseded by the second generation shuffle and other third-party products), the sheer simplicity of the interface — just a click wheel and an on-off switch — but, more than anything, it was the stonkingly good sound quality, even on the standard ear-bud headphones.

Just over two years and several generations of iPod later, I found myself hankering after a new iPod that would hold all of my newly re-encoded music library and decided to plump for the recently released iPod classic. Unfortunately, like the ill-fated nano before it, the unit that Apple sent me was defective and had to be returned. However, rather than ordering a replacement I decided to hold fire for one very important reason: sound quality.

Perhaps, like me, you have always assumed that, being the market leader, the quality of the iPod sound reproduction was excellent. I mean, why else would everyone buy these things? However, it seems to be one of the industry’s worst kept secrets that sound quality on almost all of the recent iPod models is substantially below par (or should that be above par? Sorry about the golfing metaphor — I have just moved to St Andrews). Anyway, it’s just not that great, and noticeably worse than comparable offerings from Sony, Zen, Creative and so on. Not that you’d guess this from reading the reviews of the new iPods, which go on about the wonderful scrolling cover artwork, the ability to store photos, contact and calendar details, watch TV shows and movies, and the snazzy new aluminium casing. However, none of this is (in my humble opinion) worth a hoot if the device doesn’t live up to expectations in the sound reproduction department. It is, almost literally, all mouth and no trousers (or should that be the other way round? Oh dear, I’m definitely having trouble with my metaphors today…).

I must say that all of this came as a great surprise, not to mention disappointment, to me. The quality of the sound from my new iPod classic (while it was still working, that is) was merely adequate and not exciting or dynamic, as I had come to expect from the iPod shuffle. Of course, I wasn’t expecting perfection, especially given that I was listening to MP3s as opposed to uncompressed audio, but even after tweaking the EQ settings, the sound was quite thin and lifeless, and not something I’d want to walk around listening to every day. Even worse, many of the EQ settings caused the signal to distort as they did not attenuate the volume to compensate for the increased level of bass. This made some of the better EQ settings more or less unlistenable on certain tracks, and with no way of customising them, there was not much I could do to remedy the situation.

After doing a little research, I stumbled across Bill Machrone’s excellent, although somewhat controversial, article on iPod sound quality that seemed to prove what my ears were telling me (figuratively speaking). It seems that most iPods, although technically very accurate when not under load, fail to accurately reproduce certain frequencies when driving a standard pair of headphones, particularly in the bass register. Although I don’t pretend to understand the precise technical reasons for this, combined with my own iPod experience it would appear that Apple just isn’t prioritising sound quality in any of the current iPod models. It’s not that it is impossible to achieve better sound quality in such a small device — some of the previous generation iPods are widely acknowledged to have sound quality at least as good, if not better, than my first generation iPod shuffle. However, it seems that increased storage capacity and additional bells and whistles have meant sacrificing audio quality, resulting in a quite obviously sub-standard listening experience.

I must admit that I do like some of the iPod classic’s other features, such as video playback, photo browsing and games, but if the thing doesn’t perform in the audio department then these are little compensation. I mean, the iPod is first and foremost supposed to be a music player, and this is presumably what most people buy it for. Perhaps the deficient sound quality is a result of consumers being less picky about sound than they are about other aspects of the device, although the lack of serious competition for the iPod is also undoubtedly a factor (I wonder what the new Zune sounds like?). In my view, Apple have become complacent about what is to me the most important part of the iPod user experience, namely, what it sounds like, and initial feedback suggests that the iPhone and new iPod touch are no better.

Come on Apple, we know that you can do better than this! Dodgy sound quality is perhaps understandable in the entry level devices such as the 2G iPod shuffle and nano, especially given their size, but there really is no excuse for poor sound quality in the top of the range models, even if it means adding another £10 or £20 to the price. After all, if they can do it with the 1G iPod shuffle, then surely they can make the full-sized iPods sound even better? Until then, I think I’ll just stick with my original shuffle — or perhaps get a replacement classic to connect to my stereo. But carrying it around to use on headphones just isn’t worth it unless the sound quality is up to scratch.

iPod touch — very nice, but…

Thu, 6 Sep 2007 09:53:26 +0100

Yesterday, Apple introduced the iPod touch, and very nice it is too. There’s no doubt that the multi-touch interface that the company introduced with the still-yet-to-be-released-in-Europe iPhone is groundbreaking, and that the form factor and power of the new iPod device is quite incredible, especially with prices starting at just £199. However, in my view the new iPod suffers from two quite serious flaws.

Firstly, it just doesn’t have enough storage space. 8Gb or 16Gb is fine for listening to music on the daily commute, but I want an iPod that can store the whole of my music collection (which currently clocks in at around 25Gb) with plenty of space to spare for photos, films, TV programmes, etc. After all, isn’t the iPod touch supposed to be a groundbreaking multimedia player, and not just a music device? With the previous generation of iPods clocking in at 30Gb and 60Gb (recently updated to 80Gb and 160Gb, respectively), 16Gb seems decidedly small. Of course, it all comes down to Apple’s choice to focus exclusively on solid state flash memory based storage instead of the hard drive technology that is embedded in the newly renamed iPod classic. No doubt this is the way forward in the long term, particularly with a view to extending battery life, and as memory prices fall, Apple will release more substantial 24Gb and 32Gb models. However, this alone makes me want to wait for the second or third generation models, since the current incarnation just doesn’t do justice to the iPod concept of being able to carry around your entire music collection with you (for users with a smaller set of music or lower encoding quality this will be less of an issue). As such, it’s more of a souped up iPod nano on steroids than a true replacement for the previous generation iPod, which is presumably why Apple are continuing to sell them under the new moniker.

The second failing is less forgiveable and concerns the omission of any kind of built-in e-mail application. Since the iPod touch runs the same mobile version of OS X that powers the iPhone and has built-in Wi-Fi support, there is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever why it shouldn’t be able to send and receive e-mails via a wireless network. In fact, the ability to check e-mails on the go is one of the ‘killer apps’ of such a device (although see below for some other game-changing ideas). Add to that the fact that you can already send e-mail via your favourite webmail client using the embedded web browser that ships with iPod touch, why don’t Apple include their excellent Mail application as standard? The newly released .Mac Web Gallery feature would work a treat with iPod touch, which already stores photographs and allows photos to be transferred directly from a camera, subject to the storage limitations mentioned above. The only explanation for this is that they want to avoid sales of iPod touch cannibalising the newly (or yet-to-be, depending on where you live) released iPhone, which is touted as a ‘breakthrough communications device’. In other words, they’ve hobbled the iPod in order to sell more iPhones. This is a completely cynical and ultimately short-sighted business decision that I’m sure they will eventually reverse. It makes the difference between iPod touch being a mobile computing platform that competes with the like of Palm etc., and purely a media player — albeit it a very fancy and desirable one. I really hope that Apple reconsider on this front as soon as possible, since this is a key reasons why myself or anyone else would want to buy or upgrade to an iPod touch, as opposed to the iPod classic, which is already a perfectly good media player.

Will these two flaws sink the iPod touch? Of course not. These things are going to sell like hot cakes regardless of their shortcomings, but I do feel that consumers are being short-changed by the lack of storage space and e-mail support. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that Apple have underpriced the iPod touch, and that a higher-end model with these facilities added would have been a better first release, with lower priced lower capacity models becoming available later on, as is often the case with new Apple products. Perhaps Apple was banking on flash memory falling in price more quickly — which, I suspect, was one of the reasons why the capacity of the 5G iPod was kept to 30Gb, so that it would be more than matched by the 32Gb iPod touch — but the need to release the new player before the lucrative holiday season got the better of them and they had to stick with the lower capacity models. In any case, each of the above factors is enough to put me off buying an iPod touch for the time being, and perhaps indefinitely as I might just wait for the 3G iPhone to be released, all of which is saying something as I was practically reaching for my credit card as soon Steve Jobs started his keynote presentation!

Two additional features that I think are not so much flaws as missed opportunities are the omission of support for Apple’s AirTunes streaming Wi-Fi protocol plus iTunes sharing, along with an iChat-style messaging client. The former would be a great feature for playing audio around the home — just imagine walking around with your iPod touch, music blasting out of your home stereo. It would make the iPod into a kind of über-trendy media-savvy remote. Adding support for iTunes’ music sharing facility would allow friends to listen to and browse your music collection via their iPods, Macs or PCs enabling a whole new level of (completely legal) multi-media sharing. Similarly, the inclusion of an iChat client would take the iPod to a whole new level, allowing people on the same wireless network to chat with each other, and all entirely for free. Even in the absence of a Wi-Fi network, iPod touch could make use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology to send messages to other iPod users either directly (i.e. from iPod to iPod) or by ‘hopping’ from one iPod to another using a secure transfer protocol on each intermediate device, making a kind of dynamic virtual P2P network. I can see this really taking off on college campuses and anywhere that young (and not so young!) people congregate, as it would create a whole new way of meeting and interacting with people — especially since you already have something to talk about and share, namely your favourite music.

No doubt we will see some if not all of the above features appearing in future generations of the iPod touch, or perhaps even via future software updates. Until then, I’m going to keep my credit card safely in my wallet… or will I?I’m very tempted to go for the updated 80Gb iPod classic. At just £159 with such a massive storage capacity, this now seems a bit of a steal, and since it does just about everything the new iPod touch does minus a bit of user interface gloss, the idea of paying an extra £40 for a mere tenth of the storage capacity and a big screen starts to seem a little crazy. Oh well, there’s always the 3G iPhone…

Update: I have just ordered a silver 80Gb iPod classic on the basis that I will one day (contrary to a previous blog entry) buy an iPhone. On reflection, the classic and the iPhone actually complement each other rather well, one for carting round your entire music collection and the other for daily listening and communication, so I guess I won’t be getting an iPod touch after all. Such is life.

What no Leopard?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0100

At the risk of turning this blog into an Apple fan site (or is it too late for that already?), I just wanted to make a few comments about Apple’s surprise announcement on Thursday to delay the release its next generation operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, until the Autumn. Originally slated for launch in Spring 2007, the new OS was rumoured to be making its debut at the company’s developer conference on June 11th (already slightly stretching the definition of ‘Spring’) alongside the new iPhone. But delays apparently relating to the reassignment of staff to the iPhone project (also not due for release in Europe until the Autumn) had caused the schedule to slipped, and so even though Leopard would be technically complete by then, it still wouldn’t be stable or well tested enough for a final release, and so Apple decided to hold back the launch a whole four months.

On the one hand, I have no doubt that Apple made the right decision. Having been involved with software projects that were up against an impossible deadline and then decided to ship anyway — very much against my advice, I might add! — I have no desire to see Apple’s rising star be dashed by a buggy and incomplete software release, especially one as crucial as a new OS version. This is exactly the sort of tactic that got Microsoft such a bad reputation in the 1990s when it adopted a ‘ship first, fix later’ policy that turned so many people off Windows (even though most of us has no choice but to go ahead and keep on using it anyway). Such a move easily damage the Mac’s reputation as a stable and reliable platform just when it is starting to make inroads into the mass market.

On the other hand, it is obviously disappointing for us Mac users to have to wait even longer to get our hands on what looks to be a fairly substantial upgrade. In a way, it shows just how far ahead of its time Mac OS X is that a release that is getting on for two years old is able to compete with Microsoft’s recently released Vista operating system — and in some areas is arguably still well ahead. No doubt Leopard will leapfrog Vista in terms of both usability and features, and the delay seems unlikely to dent the rapid growth of Mac sales (in fact, it might even give it a boost as many existing users who been waiting for the the new OS to be released before upgrading to an Intel Mac might just go ahead and buy a new machine anyway, which is one reason that Apple may have decided to postpone the release for such a long period).

So why the four month delay? The official line is that it is entirely down to the iPhone, but I find this rather implausible as such a large slippage could easily have been known about and announced much further in advance, as would have been in Apple’s interest to minimise the potential impact upon hardware sales. Rumours suggest that Apple is holding off because it wishes to build in full Windows Vista compatibility via some kind of virtualisation technology, allowing users to run Mac and Windows software side by side on the same desktop. I find this highly implausible, partly because Apple itself strenuously denies the claim (not that one should read too much into that), but mainly because I don’t think it makes sense for them to compete against existing third-party products (e.g. Parallels Desktop) which already do the job admirably. Windows support is more of a safety net for encouraging people to switch to the Mac, and so it is the capability to run Windows applications that is more important than the actual implementation. At the end of the day, Apple don’t really want to encourage people to use Windows software on a regular basis as it undermines the market for their own applications, from which they make a lot of money.

Personally, I think it is more likely that Apple have seized the opportunity to spend a bit more time on Leopard in order to make a really kick-ass operating system that will give Windows Vista a really good run for its money. The relatively slow uptake of Vista may also have helped give Apple some more breathing space to strengthen their hand. Although I have no particular inside knowledge about the so-called ‘secret features’ that are rumoured to be part of the final Leopard release, I think we can expect to see a few surprises, as well as plenty of new eye-candy. Here are some guesses and/or predictions as to what might be included…

Animations galore. The advent of the new Core Animation framework will make it much easier to add animated effects not just to applications but throughout the operating system. Expect to see animated desktop and application icons, zooming windows and impressively smooth transitions for just about every user action you can think of. (Oh, and plenty of new 3D screen savers!)

Look and feel. I must admit that I have mixed feelings about this. It’s probably time that Aqua underwent a facelift, but I still really like it and so hopefully anything Apple do will be available as an optional setting (unlikely, but I can hope!). I suspect that we will see a replacement of the current blue and white theme with a much more businesslike ‘black gloss’ style, possibly with real-time reflections and highlighting (but probably not transparency) that will give Leopard a real visual edge. (Recent reports are that the brushed metal look has already bitten the dust, but I suspect that its replacement has yet to be fully revealed…)

Finder enhancements. When Apple will finally get around to rewriting the Finder to make it fully multitasking is anybody’s guess, as anyone who has ever ejected an iDisk or had trouble connecting to a remote server will testify. However, I do think that we will see some interesting enhancements to the ways that files and folders are presented, perhaps related to recent patent filings concerning variable sized folder icons and document stacks (aka ‘piles’). Remember, you heard it here first! (Well, OK, second.)

Enhanced Front Row. Apple have been curiously silent about enhancements to their Front Row media centre application, but it would certainly make sense for them to include the software that is currently shipping as part of Apple TV in OS X Leopard. With an additional six months of development, this will probably sport some interesting bells and whistles, perhaps including real-time downloads from the iTunes Movie Store and pluggable TV and video support for the likes of Elgato’s EyeTV.

Multi-touch support. I’m entering the realms of fantasy now, but another reason for the delay to Leopard might just be to add built-in support for new multi-touch display devices, such as the long awaited iTablet. This would make sense given that multi-touch interface is at the centre of the new iPhone interface, along with future iPod models, and opens up whole new possibilities for the way we use computers. Imagine, for example, an on-screen mixing desk for rearranging your GarageBand songs, or lightbox-style photo management where you can drag and zoom images with your fingertips — now that would be something worth waiting for!

One more thing… Going by past experience, there is bound to be something in OS X Leopard that hasn’t occurred to anyone outside Cupertino. Something so simple or obvious that we will all wondered why we didn’t think of it before and how we lived without it. Perhaps it will be a new way of managing windows (3D?), organising files (timeline view?), or perhaps a flashy new disk management system (not so exciting, but still a nice touch). Whatever it is, Apple will be trying to keep it very much under wraps for the time being and is clearly of the opinion that it will seem well worth the wait by the time Leopard finally arrives. Steve Jobs is nothing if not a showman and I’m sure that he has something up his sleeve that is going to create a bit of a stir and have them flocking to pick up copies of his latest OS in addition to all of its previously touted features (unlike Vista, which arrived hardly without a whimper, let alone a bang)…

One issue that hasn’t received much attention (yet) is the implications of the above announcement for the new versions of iLife and iWork. These are traditionally launched in January each year, but the latest updates appear to have been held back in order to take advantage of Leopard specific features, which may even be required to run them. Personally, I’d find this a little surprising, although Apple may well use new versions of iLife as an incentive for people to upgrade to Leopard, or perhaps bundle the former with the latter. It’s hard to see how Apple are going to play this one as releasing the updated software suites in June might steal some of Leopard’s thunder, as well as requiring additional development effort, especially if current builds are heavily coupled to Leopard (e.g. Time Machine). That said, several of these applications (e.g. iWeb) are now in urgent need of a refresh, and launching them sooner would generate substantial new revenue for Apple. However, due to accounting regulations in the US that apparently prevent companies from shipping software with features that are not yet accessible, this may mean that customers would have to pay an additional fee to unlock the Leopard-specific features, which could generate bad feeling.

All things considered, I think that Apple will probably wait until October to release the new iLife and bundle it along with the new OS, or perhaps as part of an increased annual .Mac subscription, which would make a lot of sense given that many Mac users tend to upgrade to the latest version of iLife every year anyway (and let’s face it, .Mac needs a bit of a boost). iWork will most likely launch at the same time, or shortly afterwards, and since it is probably less tied into Leopard, will also be backwards compatible with any recent Mac OS version. If this is the case then I guess I’ll just have to struggle on with iWeb 1.1 until October, even though it slows my 2Gb Intel iMac during loading, saving and publishing to a crawl due to the number of pages and images on my site. (Memory management is definitely not one of iWeb’s strong points!)

So, will I be buying Mac OS X Leopard when it comes out? You betcha! Will it be worth the wait? Absolutely. Will I be disappointed if they don’t release a new version of iLife before then? Yes. And is it worth waiting until then to exchange your aging PC for a shiny new Mac? No! There’s plenty of life in the old cat (i.e. Tiger) yet, and the major aspects of Mac OS X are unlikely to undergo any dramatic changes in the new release. I’d still take OS X 10.4 over Windows Vista any day of the week, and with Leopard waiting in the wings it’s still an excellent time to switch to the Mac platform. The next year is going to an interesting one for Applewatchers everywhere, and I’m very much looking forward to finding out what’s next for the renamed Apple Inc. I think we could see some very interesting products coming out of Cupertino in the next 12 months, and OS X Leopard may well be just the beginning…

Update: A slightly less optimistic appraisal of the reasons behind the delay is that many of its new features (e.g. Core Animation, resolution independence, 64-bit support) require additional effort from third-party developers, who have been given more time to update their applications to take advantage of them.

Other suggestions for potentially interesting new features include remote control of networked Macs via Apple TV, cover flow view in the Finder for browsing documents and media files (now confirmed)...

Three Apple gadgets I won’t be buying

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0100

As my previous blog entries show (not to mention the rest of my web site), I’m a bit of a fan of Apple Inc. This has nothing to do with brand loyalty or ‘cool factor’. I genuinely think that they design some of the best software and hardware around, and generally find using their kit to be a pleasure rather than a chore due to the incredible attention to detail and the overall user experience — unlike some other well-known software (and hardware) companies I could mention! So when some Apple gadgets arrive that don’t have me positively foaming at the mouth, I feel that this event is in itself worthy of mention.

Apple TV

The first of these is, as the picture suggests, the Apple TV. Don’t get me wrong, I think that this gadget is a huge leap forward in terms of the convergence between computers and the television, which pundits have been predicting for well over a decade. The trouble is that it just doesn’t do very much! For £199 (slightly more than the $299 US list price), you get a sleek aluminium box that syncs your iTunes music and videos and plays them back over your shiny new widescreen TV. Whoopy doo!

Leaving aside the fact that the hard drive is an uninspiring 40Gb (not so much when you consider that just one hour of digital TV takes up about 2.5Gb, although admittedly 640 x 480 resolution uses somewhat less), and that the UK iTunes store doesn’t stock TV shows or movies (yet), I just don’t find this a very compelling proposition. I’m not so worried about the lack of digital video recording facilities (I can do that already directly onto my Mac), but the fact that you can’t download a movie straight from the iTunes store and watch it while it’s downloading, or stream a DVD directly from the computer, which would allow Apple TV to double up as a remote controlled DVD player (this would work especially well with Blu-Ray), seems unnecessarily restrictive. I’d even be happy if the unit functioned as a wireless base station, allowing a USB or ethernet connection to be streamed via 802.11n all over the house, but this requires a separate box (more of which later), which seems odd considering that most of the required gadgetry is surely already present inside the Apple TV?

To add insult to injury, it seems that the unit doesn’t work on a regular 4:3 aspect ratio TV, unless you enjoy watching a squashed picture.* I can understand why owners of nice, shiny new LCD and plasma displays might want to show then off with Apple’s funky minimalist device, but why not allow the rest of us to have some fun too? There doesn’t seem to be any particularly technical reason for this, given that the Apple TV hardware is more than capable of delivering regular 525 or 625 line video (although the interlacing might present more of a problem), so I guess it’s down to a marketing decision on Apple’s part. I suppose that this will be a moot point in a few years time anyway when most people have upgraded to widescreen, but at the moment it all seems rather cynical and unnecessary. Even worse, there is apparently no support for multichannel audio, even via the built-in optical out! Surely this is a must on any high-end video device? Oh, and no cables supplied? I mean, come on…

So, much as I like the idea of streaming digital video to my TV, I think I’ll pass on Apple TV, at least in its present incarnation. Once they’ve doubled the storage capacity and added the ability to do other things like check e-mail and browse the net I might be more interested. Which brings me onto the second dismal digital gizmo…

Airport Extreme Base Station

Having been tempted to buy an Airport Express 802.11g base station for a while now, mainly due to the possibility of streaming iTunes directly to my stereo, I was awaiting the new Airport Extreme base station with interest. Surely, I thought, Apple would deliver a kick-ass wireless modem/router that would integrate nicely with my home network? Not so! The Airport Extreme is overpriced, under-specified and, well, just generally butt ugly (OK, I exaggerate, but it’s hardly a work of art). My main bugbear is the lack of an integrated ADSL modem. I don’t know what things are like in the States, but here in the UK most broadband providers ship a free USB modem. Unfortunately, the Airport Extreme requires an ethernet connection to function correctly meaning that I would need to shell out an extra £40 for a suitable modem (actually quite hard to find these days) or keep my existing wireless modem/router, which kind of defeats the point of the exercise! Again, to make matters worse, the Extreme doesn’t provide the streaming audio functionality of its smaller cousin, the Express, meaning that I can’t attach it to my stereo (although perhaps this is to boost the sales of the aforementioned product…), although USB printer and hard disk support are nice touches.

That said, it just doesn’t seem right that I can buy an equivalent Belkin box with integrated modem for the same price as the Airport Extreme, leading me to suspect that Apple have only released this device in order to satisfy people who want to go for an all-Apple solution or don’t have the technical know-how to set up their own network using equipment from another manufacturer. Or maybe they just didn’t think about us Europeans and it works perfectly well for the American market where DSL modems all sport ethernet connections. In any case, this seems to be a missed opportunity for delivering a truly user-friendly and integrated home networking solution. Maybe I will go for that Airport Express unit after all (although couldn’t Apple have released their own remote control unit for half the price of this ugly — but still rather clever — Belkin device)?

And so to the third, and most perhaps surprising, device that I won’t be buying…

iPhone

OK, I’ll admit it. I would love to have an iPhone. I think it’s a genius bit of kit, and heralds the start of not just a new generation of easy to use and highly functional mobile communicators (remember Star Trek?), but new portable computing devices of all kinds. Touch screen technology is undoubtedly the way to go — after all the finger is the ultimate pointing device — and the potential of multi-touch technology is simply awesome. The problem is the price. I don’t actually think the iPhone itself is overpriced ($399 or $499, depending upon how much memory you want), but as a pay-as-you-go phone user, I have no intention of being locked into a two-year contract just for the pleasure of owning an Apple iPhone (although I might think differently if I was working full-time, especially if it were a job that involved any amount of phone usage!).

No, what I want is a widescreen iPod with all of the features of the iPhone, except the cellphone itself. Internet browsing, e-mail, AIM and Skype messaging — maybe even VOIP would be good. Plus it would have to have at least 30Mb of flash RAM, as my iTunes library now takes up almost 25Mb and I’d want to save some space for films and TV programmes. No doubt Apple will release such a gadget eventually (Christmas 2007?), but only once the real iPhone has been on sale to early adopters for several months in order to tie them into their two-year contracts and maximise revenue. Me, I think I’ll wait for the second generation (although if you do know of any of the above gadgets that just happen to have fallen off the back of a lorry, then I’d be glad to take them off your hands!).

;-)

*Update: contrary to early reports, it seems that Apple TV does work with standard definition 4:3 ratio TVs in 480i or 576i resolution. See here for details.

Ripping yarns

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Well, not so much yarns as CDs. A little while ago I decided to re-encode my entire CD collection in iTunes, mainly because I wasn’t happy with the quality of the original files, which I had encoded in AAC format at 160kbps. This was mainly because I was running out of space on my laptop hard drive at the time, and so decided to re-rip the original 192kbps MP3 files that I had been using (and was relatively happy with) into AAC format, which is more compact, and supposedly higher quality. However, I was never really happy with the results, which seemed to lack definition and exhibited more noticeable audio artefacts, such as harshness in the upper-mid range and lack of stereo definition on my trusty iPod shuffle. (You’ll have to excuse me, I used to work as a sound engineer and so am quite fussy about such things, even though my hearing isn’t quite as good as it used to be — partly as a consequence of the aforementioned line of work!)

After some searching on the Internet, I came across LAME, which is a cross-platform MP3 encoder, highly rated by audiophiles everywhere. Although Apple already ships an MP3 encoder along with iTunes, it is (apparently) optimised for speed of encoding, rather than audio quality. This is presumably because Apple wants to push its own preferred QuickTime AAC/MP4 format, which is more up-to-date and also supports Digital Rights Management (DRM) for downloading from iTunes. Whilst I would agree that AAC is undoubtedly far superior at low bit-rates, such as those used when streaming content over the Internet or to mobile phones, I am rather dubious of its merits at higher data rates as opposed to the more established MP3 format. Some listening tests on headphones seemed to confirm my suspicions, as even though the AAC files sounded brighter and more crisp (which some people may prefer), they were distinctly less pleasant to listen to and more ‘digital sounding’ than their MP3 equivalents, which sounded more like the original uncompressed audio (although some audible artefacts were still present).

Re-ripping my entire CD collection is quite a major undertaking, and so I looked around for a good software package that I could use to encode the MP3 audio files and add them to my iTunes library. I started off with iTunes-LAME, which is a AppleScript that runs from within iTunes itself, but couldn’t get this to work properly on my Intel Mac (it worked for individual files, but not for entire CDs), despite replacing the LAME executable with the latest version compiled for Intel processors. After some more searching, I came across Max, which is an excellent shareware utility that rips and encodes audio in a wide variety of formats, optionally allowing you to add it to your iTunes library. Unfortunately, it is also rather buggy, producing errors at the end of each CD and often when adding songs to my library. However, provided that I’m not viewing my iTunes library at the time, and am on-hand to click the ‘OK’ button from time to time, this seemed to work reasonably well, and with a little tweaking I was able to set it up so that all I had to do was load the CD into my iMac and the rest would happen automagically.

Having sorted out the software side, I then had to decide at what quality to encode my collection. LAME provides a considerable number of options, based on either quality or bit rate, plus various tweaks and optimisations, such as joint or normal stereo and variable bit-rate encoding (VBR). The only way to decide was to perform a number of listening tests, so I selected one of my favourite tracks (π from Kate Bush’s Aerial) and encoded it in a variety of formats to compare the difference on a decent pair of headphones. I was initially quite surprised just how obvious the limitations of both AAC and MP3 formats were as compared to the original CD. Even at the highest quality (320kpbs), some of the subtleties of the original qualities were lost, making the difference between a good sounding song (the MP3 version) and actually feeling like you were there (the original CD) — although admittedly this was at the limits of what I could consciously discern. With the CD, I could just see the instruments or feel the singer’s breathing; qualities that failed to translate into either format. The difference between joint and discrete stereo was also quite noticeable, especially with instruments that had been ‘double-tracked’, i.e. recorded twice, with one playing solely out of the left speaker and the other solely out of the right (a common recording technique). With joint stereo, it was harder to hear these as two separate instruments, as they became slightly blurred and fuzzy, whereas with true stereo (i.e. separately compressed left and right tracks), each sat prominently in its own space, although what was gained at the edges was lost at the centre, as the vocals tended to lose a slight amount of presence and definition (which I guess is what you’d expect, but it was surprising that you could hear it all the same).

In the end, I plumped for 256kbps VBR true stereo MP3 files, which seemed like an acceptable compromise between audio quality and file size, with a typical song clocking in at between 6 and 10Mb. Although I was tempted to go for the maximum 320kbps quality, this would mean that I could only fit around 80 songs on my iPod shuffle, and the entire library would come to over 30Gb, which seems a little over the top given that I was unlikely to notice the difference in everyday listening anyway. (If I regularly listened to iTunes on my home stereo, as opposed to playing the original CDs, I might feel differently, however.) That said, 256kbps MP3 is a still a big step up in quality from the 160kbps AAC that I started with, and double the 128kbps rate that Apple sells on its iTunes store, which is clearly inferior to CD quality — despite what they tell you in the small print (‘indistiguishable from the original’ my arse!).

Since then, I have been dutifully loading CDs into my computer, and am currently just over half way through my collection. It’s actually taking less time than I thought and I should be finished in another day or two (not that I’m sitting here all the time, you understand!). The only pain is that Max doesn’t automatically capture all information about a CD, e.g. the year and genre (although I usually end up changing that anyway), which means a bit of fiddling around afterwards to fill in the missing information (I told you I was a stickler for detail!). Also, since I have other content in my iTunes library, I decided to add the new files to my existing library rather than starting another one from scratch, which means that I have to go through and delete all the old versions that were already present, manually transferring any song ratings and playlist information. It would be nice if Max or iTunes automatically replaced the older version with the new one, or at least gave you the option to do so but that’s a relatively minor niggle (the latter only does so if you use its built-in encoding options).

One pleasant side-effect of my current ripping efforts is that I can now make better use of iTunes’ excellent ‘cover flow’ feature (pictured above) and browse options to view my collection. It really feels like my CD collection is inside the computer, as opposed to being just a random collection of MP3 files, which is nice. Also, it increases the number of surprises (pleasant or otherwise!) that I receive when playing my iPod, which is set up to sync a random selection of tunes from my library. (I swear to God that I’ve never heard some of those songs before, even though they’ve been in my CD collection for years!) Whether this means that I will ‘rediscover my music collection’ or end up listening to more random junk remains to be seen…

I guess my lasting impression is that, convenient though the iTunes/iPod combo may be, it still isn’t a match for the full spine tingling effervescence of raw, uncompressed 44.1kHz, 16 bit stereo digital audio, let alone the new high definition formats, such as Sony’s Super Audio CD (SACD). Although it may be hard to tell the difference between this and 320kbps MP3 audio, the original version still has the edge. Consequently, until Apple start shipping iPods with 250Gb hard drives, I wouldn’t go throwing away your entire CD collection just yet, even though it does take up more space and is a tad less portable than the iPod equivalent! I guess it depends upon which is more important to you, but I’ll stick with yesterday’s technology for the full Monty of audio fidelity and continue buying my music on Compact Disc, thank you very much — at least until the next best thing comes along!

Energy saving tip for Intel Mac users

Sat, 3 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst messing around with the power management settings (pmset) command line utility on my iMac, I stumbled across a number of addition options that I hadn’t seen before. These relate to a ‘hibernation’ feature in which in which the entire state of the computer’s memory is saved to disk upon entering sleep mode. This enables the computer to completely power down during sleep and/or restore its memory from disk in the case of a power failure. This is something that Windows PCs have been doing for years (although not altogether reliably in the case of my clapped out old Dell!), but that Apple have chosen not to add to OS X until relatively recently.

After doing some more digging on the Internet, I discovered that all Intel Macs support this feature, which can be enabled by entering the following command via the Terminal utility:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

and typing your administrator password. A number of different modes are supported with zero being the default option (no hibernation), 1 being always hibernate (slower, but more energy efficient), 3 being a combination of normal sleep mode but with the ability to restore from disk if the power is switched off or interrupted, and 5 and 7 being the equivalents of 1 and 3 for anyone who uses secure virtual memory (an additional security option enabled via System Preferences). The above screen is shown when the machine comes out of hibernate mode, with the progress bar taking 10 seconds or so to restore (depending upon how much RAM you have). In mode 3, this only appears after the power has been interrupted, in which case you can control whether the machine starts up automatically when power is restored via the custom options tab in System Preferences, Energy Saver.

I find that mode 3 gives the best of both worlds, allowing me to quickly enter and exit sleep mode, whilst providing safe recovery of data in case of power loss or switching off at the mains. As I normally leave my Mac running all the time (convenient, but not very environmentally friendly), this means that I can happily switch it off at night without having to shut down provided that I put it to sleep first. (Be careful to wait for the pulsing light though before you switch off, as saving the data to disk takes a few seconds longer than entering normal sleep mode with the default setup.) Unfortunately, these options only seem to be available on the newer Intel Macs, although there may be ways of enabling it on older PowerPC machines too, I’m not sure.
Knowing that my computer isn’t wasting energy overnight helps me to sleep a bit sounder too. Now if only Apple would make their machines more environmentally friendly and recyclable… Come on Steve, green my Apple!

Further information about ‘safe sleep’ mode can be found on the MacWorld web site.

iPod, yes! Nano, no.

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

As I have commented previously, I have deep love and affection for my iPod shuffle (above left), which I have had for almost two years now. However, when I got the chance of receiving a free (well, almost free) iPod nano in conjunction with a promotional deal that Apple was running at the time for students, I jumped at the chance. I remember being bowled over by the incredibly sleek and almost unbelievably thin design of the nano when it was first launched in early 2006, and couldn’t resist upgrading to the 2Gb white model (above centre), which has double the capacity of my old shuffle. (Note that both of these models have since been superseded by the jaw droppingly gorgeous second generation shuffle and iPod nano, which is a more robust than the original, both of which now come in several rather jolly colours.) I was sorely disappointed when the new unit turned out to be substantially inferior, both in terms of sound quality and reliability, than my original vintage model, which I’m still using to this day.

The problems started when the ‘hold’ switch on the top of my new nano kept getting ‘stuck’ in the on position, meaning that I couldn’t operate any of the controls to start and stop the player. I contacted the Apple Store but apparently I was too late to simply exchange the whole thing for a new one and had to return the unit for repair. The service was fairly speedy and within a week or so I had a replacement iPod (or was it repaired? I couldn’t quite tell) sent to me by courier. However, no sooner had I loaded the new nano up with songs than the battery died on me and was never to be heard of again, so I packaged the little blighter back up and sent him back to Apple. Having learned my lesson, I didn’t even both to open the third one and instead put the player up for sale on Amazon Marketplace and sold it for approximately the amount that I had intended to avoid paying for it in the first place (I’m still waiting for Apple to send me the £100 rebate that was promised as part of the promotion — they claim it’s ‘currently being processed’!).

So, what went so badly wrong? Well, I suspect that because the second generation models had already been released at the time when I ordered my nano, I may have received a refurbished unit rather than a brand new player, in which case my experience may not have been typical as I’m sure (he says hopefully) that the reliability of the new models is a lot better. However, I was less than satisfied with the iPod nano for other reasons. Firstly, the credit card form factor, although very impressive to look at, was rather awkward to use in practice. It was too flimsy to wear in my jeans pocket (something my shuffle has no difficulty with) and was otherwise rather awkward to operate as it needed a dust cover to stop it from being scratched. The problem was compounded by the sensitivity of the touch wheel, which was liable to deafen me or cut out the volume at a moment’s notice each time I placed the unit in its black plastic sheath, hence the need for the use of the aforementioned ‘hold’ switch.

However, the worst feature of the iPod nano was its inferior sound quality. Now, I admit that I’m pretty picky when it comes to audio fidelity, having worked as a sound engineer many years ago, and even though I don’t go around wearing hi-fi style cans all the time, I do like my music to sound, well, as its makers intended it to. In general, I have been more than happy with the quality of the first generation iPod shuffle, whose sound was both solid and powerful at the bass end with a clean and crisp high frequency response (provided, that is, you encode your CDs at a sufficiently high bit rate — 192 kbps seems to be a good compromise between file size and audio quality). Although it has no user adjustable tone controls, it really doesn’t need them as it sounds just fine as it is, even on the supplied white earbuds, which I found to be perfectly adequate for everyday listening. Just what I would expect from a quality, no-frills audio player.

The nano, on the other hand, had what I can only describe as an unpleasant ‘digital-like’ quality to it. Although it was very hard to put my finger on exactly what was wrong with it, I found it very fatiguing to listen to for any length of time, and it lacked any serious punch or presence. Attempting to compensate for this with the built-in EQ was like fighting a losing battle as each time I got it sounding good on one track or genre of music, something else would show up the deficiencies elsewhere. In the end, I decided that I really didn’t need the nano’s extra features — the glossy screen, scroll wheel, calendar and contact database — and returned to my old iPod shuffle, whose simplicity and elegance far outweighed the nano’s superficial appeal.

Of course, not everyone would agree, and one would hope that the new models are a considerable improvement in every respect. However, I will certainly think twice before upgrading my iPod again and, much as I admire the second generation’s shuffle’s clip-on style, I think I’ll hold out for a widescreen video iPod or iPhone (once they come down in price, circa 2009), but even then will probably continue to use my trusty old iPod shuffle for everyday listening. It’s just so convenient, and sometimes it’s better to stick to the things you know rather than being lured on by the promise of greener pastures…

The PowerBook is dead, long live the iMac!

Tue, 7 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

In case you were wondering why my blog has been so quiet of late, it was because my beloved PowerBook G4 unfortunately decided to die on me in the middle of exam revision and essay writing (don’t these things always happen at the worst possible time?!). Actually, it didn’t so much as die as gradually pass out due to a faulty hard drive that had been causing it to making strange buzzing sounds every time it moved around for the past few months. At first, I thought it was quite cool as it sounded a bit like a Star Wars light saber, but then it started to do it all the time until, bit by bit, it became completely unusable. Fortunately, I was able to back up all of my important data before it failed completely and have since managed to keep it running by booting off an external Firewire drive (Macs don’t boot off USB drives for some obscure reason), but since I’d been thinking about upgrading anyway, I decided to use some money I’d earned over the summer to treat myself to a shiny new 20” Intel-based iMac, which arrived a couple of weeks ago…

First Impressions

The first thing that struck me about the iMac was its weight. For such a slim package it is surprisingly heavy at just over 10kg (for comparison, my laptop clocks in at a svelte 2.5kg). I decided to go for the wireless keyboard and mouse option and so the only setup required was to plug the machine into the mains and switch on. The startup process was amazingly straightforward, with clear on-screen instructions and diagrams guiding me through the process of pairing the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard with the base unit (although for some reason it didn’t like the WEP password protection I had set up on my wireless network, and so I had to add this manually via System Preferences).

The other thing that I noticed straight away was just how quiet it is. Apart from a low mains-like hum that seems to emanate from the hard drive (250Gb, and very fast!), or possibly the internal transformer (no ugly wall-warts here, thank you very much!), the iMac is practically silent and easily quieter than any other desktop PC I’ve used. Thanks to the excellent case design, cool air is taken in through a pair of vents that are hidden from view at the base of the machine and emitted through a slot at the upper rear, alleviating the need for the internal fan to come on most of the time. In fact, it’s only come on once so far, which gave me a shock because it sounded like a vacuum cleaner by comparison! Seeing as I will be using the iMac for sound recording, the lack of ambient noise is very important to me, and Apple have really pulled out all the stops to make this machine quite literally whisper-quiet in normal use.

The other noteworthy feature is the screen. Twenty inches of crisp, vivid LCD brilliance with the notably widescreen aspect ratio of 5:8, or 1680 x 1050 native resolution. Actually, for a screen of this size it feels like it should be able to cope with a slightly higher resolution, say 1920 x 1200, but given that OS X is currently unable to handle true resolution independence (this is reportedly coming in the next release, OS X 10.5 Leopard, early next year), this would probably cause more problems than it solves, although that won’t stop me from wanting one as soon as the next generation of iMacs come out some time next year! However, this is a minor grumble, as the quality of the display is outstanding. Colours appear rich and saturated, with even very pale shades being rendered faithfully, making my laptop screen look quite dull and lacklustre by comparison. Despite my initial scepticism, I find the widescreen aspect ratio very usable, and it is superb for watching DVDs, a task which is made even more effortless by the inclusion of the built-in Front Row media centre software and integrated infra-red remote control (luxury!).

Performance

Although I haven’t really put the machine through its paces by running any large Java or PHP applications yet (it’s got a lot to live up to — my humble laptop managed to run the entire IngentaConnect and PhilosophyWiki web sites in just 1Gb of RAM!), the new iMac does feel pretty snappy. Although my initial impression was that it wasn’t really that much faster than my 1.5GHz G4-based PowerBook, I’ve since changed my mind as the entire system just runs a lot faster and more smoothly, with near-instant response times for common tasks like switching windows, writing e-mails and so on.

Where the Core 2 Duo processor really comes into its own though is, as you might expect given the dual core nature of the beast, multitasking performance. It’s like driving a powerful car. While cruising along at a normal speeds it doesn’t really feel that much different to a small engine size, but as soon as you need to put the foot down, the power is right there. Consequently, the iMac just breezes through tasks that used to make my PowerBook struggle, or at least noticeably slow down; e.g. exporting pictures from iPhoto, viewing Dashboard for the first time, performing Spotlight searches, or publishing web sites in iWeb, for example, which gives the whole system an extremely responsive and effortless feel… which is nice. :-)

Actually, iWeb performance is one of the areas that caused my PowerBook the most trouble, and I suspect was at least partially responsible for the early demise of its hard disk due to the inordinate amount of virtual memory swapping that used to occur when running this application. Even on the iMac, it takes a good 10 seconds or so to start up, although that’s still a huge improvement over the one minute plus that it used to take on the PowerBook, although having 2Gb of RAM probably helps a lot here too (being 64-bit, the iMac is upgradeable to 3Gb of 667MHz DDR RAM, although why it doesn’t go up to 4Gb, I’m not sure — it’s even possible that this is a software limitation that will be removed once Leopard is available, although I wouldn’t count on it).

One last area where iMac performance really shines is, perhaps surprisingly, Internet access. I suspect that this has less to do with the processor power and more with the built-in wireless networking card, which seems to be considerably faster than the PowerBook version, and is theoretically capable of supporting ‘pre-8011.n’ wireless networks, although Apple haven’t shipped any drivers for this yet. Perhaps the dual core processor helps with this too, but many web pages now appear almost instantaneously that they used to take a few seconds on the PowerBook. In fact, it’s hard to believe that the data isn’t coming from a local server, it’s that fast!

Design

The industrial design of the new iMacs is quite simply stunning. Until you’ve seen one of them up close you don’t really appreciate the love and attention to detail that obviously goes into these things, as the photos just don’t do it justice. The white enclosure is covered in about 2mm of clear polycarbonate plastic, giving the whole machine an attractive glossy appearance, as if it had been been dipped in a vat of liquid glass. The keyboard and mouse follow suit, with the lack of wires only adding to the minimalist allure. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Apple are one of the few companies that can design truly beautiful computers. I mean, this thing even smells amazing! (I’m not kidding about that, by the way. It really does!)

The slot loading CD/DVD ‘superdrive’ is found in the right-hand side of the casing, which is kind of cool, even though I always have to look for it first, although I guess this gets easier with practice. There’s even a small magnet embedded in the side of the casing solely for the purpose of holding the remote control, although I prefer not to use this as the combination of computers and magnets always makes me nervous. The power button is neatly tucked away around the back of the machine, although remains easily accessible along with the various expansion ports (including mini-DVI and dual Firewire 400 — sadly Firewire 800 hasn’t made it into the iMac line yet, which is a shame as USB 2.0 is now capable of up to 480Mbps, making it theoretically faster than the Firewire bus, which seems a bit backward, even though most USB devices don’t make full use of this bandwidth). The stereo speakers are situated along the front side of the case, and curiously point down towards the desk, causing the sound to be reflected back up towards the listener. However, with a bit of tweaking in iTunes, the resulting quality is surprisingly good, and certainly more than adequate for watching TV or listening to the odd bit of music, although of course it’s no match for a proper hi-fi system or set of external speakers (which can of course be connected via the audio out — optical or digital — accessible via the rear panel).

Another feature that is still a bit of novelty for me is the built-in webcam and microphone, located just above the screen area alongside a concealed LED that lights up whenever the camera is active. When the iMac first arrived, Heike and I spent a hilarious half-hour taking amusing pictures of ourselves using the comedy distortion filters built into Photo Booth, Apple’s digital snapshot application. The quality and frame rate are surprisingly good although requires good lighting for best results, and of course the webcam can also be used in conjunction with AIM/iChat or Skype. This will be especially useful for keeping in touch with my Dad, who is hard of hearing and so cannot use the telephone, as well as friends and colleagues across the world.

Overall, the quality of the iMac design is superb, with the all-in-one base unit being a stroke of genius. (I got a kick out of the fact that my girlfriend actually asked me “Where is the computer?” before I explained that it was all hidden away behind the screen!) This results in a much smaller footprint and reduced desk clutter, the downside being that you cannot independently replace individual components, such as the screen, without upgrading the whole machine (although additional RAM can be fitted by removing a small panel along the front). If I was to be picky, I’d say that the feel of the keyboard and mouse aren’t quite up to scratch. The keys feel a little spongy for my liking and the mouse has a noticeable (although still quite negligible) time lag, presumably due to the wireless Bluetooth technology, and is generally less responsive than expected. However, since I use an ergonomic keyboard and trackball most of the time, this isn’t of much concern, and in any case, these are minor niggles that would easily be forgotten with regular use (although why Apple don’t offer an iMac configuration sans keyboard and mouse as per the Mac mini, I have no idea). On the plus side, I do very much like the functionality of the Apple ‘Mighty Mouse’, with it’s squeeze action being ideal for invoking Exposé or Dashboard, and 360° wheel for rapid scrolling and zooming. Another well thought out design detail is the low intensity of the sleep light, which gently pulses away when the machine is placed on standby, but without being bright enough to disturb any human sleep when situated in the bedroom!

Conclusion

It took me about five minutes to fall in love with the new iMac, which feels like a natural step up from my old PowerBook, with every aspect being larger, faster and brighter than its predecessor. Despite my initial trepidation, the inclusion of an Intel processor in the Apple platform has had little or no effect on the personality or ‘soul’ of the machine, which is the same old Mac that we’ve come to know and love. Indeed, after copying across the contents of my hard disk to the new iMac, it feels like I’m using exactly the same computer, only much much better (to paraphrase Laurie Anderson). I’m sure that this machine will keep me going for quite some time, and with the launch of OS X Leopard and iLife/iWork ’07 early next year, will get a whole new lease of life, making increased use of the powerful dual core processor, as well as numerous other software enhancements.

If you’re in the market for a new desktop PC, then I’d thoroughly recommend the iMac, although you may want to wait a few more months until Leopard is released, or even until the Spring when the next generation arrives, most likely including higher resolution screens and an optional high definition (Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD) optical drive, although don’t hold you’re breath. The ability to run Mac OS and Windows side by side is another important consideration, although I don’t think I’ll be doing this any time soon due to concerns about Windows security and malware (OS X is both inherently more secure and less of a target for hackers due to the relatively low market penetration). However, if you’ve not yet made the switch to the computing nirvana that is Mac OS X, then this could be a compelling factor in your decision and takes the risk out of switching to a new platform (although why you would want to buy an iMac to use as a Windows PC is beyond me!).

Overall I’m very happy with my purchase, and the inclusion of an 4Gb iPod nano for an additional £29 thanks to Apple’s recent mail-in rebate for students was an added bonus (more on that another time). It’s hard to fault the new iMac. However, leaving all the technical jargon to one side, it’s as if a little piece of the future has accidentally fallen into the present, giving one a glimpse of how all computers will soon look and work in the 21st century. Having said that, I’m sure that even the iMac will look quite pedestrian when compared to the computers of five to ten years time — but that’s progress for you! Plus, I can now run iWeb without having to go and make a cup of tea while waiting for it to start up, so you can expect more frequent updates to this blog once more!

I don’t suppose anyone is interested in a second-hand PowerBook with one careful owner and a replacement hard drive? :-)

Post-WWDC analysis

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0100

Well, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is over for another year and now that all the excitement has died down, what did it bring us? Well, the incredibly powerful and ultra-desirable Mac Pro, for one thing, plus the long awaited Xserve, both sporting four processor cores (two dual-core Intel Xeon CPUs) and up to 16Gb onboard memory with 64-bit support as standard. This completes the transition of the Mac range to Intel processors well ahead — or exactly on time, depending on which way you look at it — of schedule. However, Steve Jobs’ keynote address was once again notable as much for what it left out as for what it contained. Steve himself, it has to be said, was looking extremely poorly, although whether this is more to do with recent health problems or ongoing investigations into the award of Apple stock options to senior company executives is a matter of speculation.

On the hardware side, the high specifications of the new ‘pro’ machines opens up a gaping hole between the entry level Mac mini and mid-range iMac consumer machines and the new high-end Xeon workstations, primarily designed for professional use. Many commentators have already begun to speculate about a new ‘headless’ (i.e. without monitor) Mac configuration featuring limited but expansion capabilities, built-in graphics card (the Mac Pro can support up to four) and a Core 2 Duo 64-bit processor (not as fast as the Xeon but still a step up from the current iMac and mini offerings). Personally, I was very disappointed not to see the iMac and MacBook Pros given a speed bump to the new ‘Merom’ Intel processors, which would yield up to 30% performance increase and better thermal efficiency, which translates into longer battery life for portables or quieter operation for desktops, but this is reported to be still in the pipeline, possibly emerging some time in October ready for the pre-Christmas rush. As soon as they do this I intend to buy one, although maybe I’ll hold out even longer for Sony blu-ray support. In any case, a competitively priced Mac desktop machine would do much to bolster Apple’s campaign to encourage existing PC users to switch to Mac, and in particular make some inroads into the lucrative gaming sector, a market where Apple has been traditionally weak due to poor software support and graphics performance. I personally think that such a machine is highly likely, and may be released as soon as next month with a new enclosure and form factor aimed squarely at the home media hub market, but more of that below…

I was also very excited to hear about some of the new features that will form part of the next version of the Mac operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The obvious highlights were Time Machine and Spaces, both of which are very cool. However, two announcements that received much less fanfare but that are likely to have a much larger impact on the future of the Mac platform were the integration of the ‘next generation’ of Front Row, Apple’s home media software into the operating system proper (it has previously been an add-on extra) and the new Core Animation API, which is the source of much of the new eye candy in Leopard. The former, I believe, is the strongest indication yet that Apple aims to pursue the media hub market by selling PCs that are capable of recording, organising, downloading and replaying a wide range of formats and designed to be hooked up directly to your home stereo and TV set. Combined with the much rumoured iTunes movie store and iPod video player device, I suspect that Leopard will include some major developments in this area, and possibly some new hardware releases when it comes to market in Spring 2007. The second announcement, Core Animation, is no less exciting and I think will herald the inclusion of some jaw droppingly gorgeous visual effects in the final version of Leopard, as well as providing third-party developers with a way to create seamless visual transitions and animation effects within their own applications. Those developers who were somewhat underwhelmed by the apparent lack of progress in the user interface of OS X Leopard will, I’m sure, be pleasantly surprised by the final release, which looks likely to include a substantially reworked Finder interface and some fairly radical changes to the look and feel of Mac OS X, which has remained largely unchanged since the original version 10.0 release.

Overall, the strategy seems to be to portray Microsoft Vista, the much delayed next release of the Windows platform, as being — let’s see, how shall we put it? — somewhat feeble and pedestrian when compared to Apple’s next-generation offering, with slogans such as ‘Introducing Vista 2.0’ and ‘Hasta la vista, Vista’ playing to the Mac faithful in poking fun at its competitor. In the end, the results will speak for themselves, but whether any of this will do much to dent Microsoft’s overwhelming dominance of the desktop PC market is anybody’s guess. However, it has got to be good news for the average Mac user who can look forward to a slew of new OS features and user interface enhancements now that Apple now has just over six months to finalise the changes that will determine whether OS X on Intel fulfils its promise to become the platform of choice for discerning PC buyers, or whether Apple continues to be a bit player in the PC market. Early indications look good, but don’t expect Microsoft to concede without a fight. It has already ditched plans to produce an Intel version of its ageing Virtual PC software that allows older Macs to run the Windows operating system and application software in the face of stiff competition from other players, including Apple’s own Boot Camp offering. If it were to even threaten to discontinue the Mac version of its Office productivity suite this would seriously dent Apple’s credibility, even though they already have their own replacement for it quietly waiting in the wings in the shape of iWork and FileMaker, which is arguably the best home and small office database product currently available. However, given Microsoft’s stranglehold on the business market, it would be difficult for Apple to make any inroads without its competitor’s somewhat reluctant backing.
In any case, OS X Leopard is one piece of software that is definitely on my shopping list for next year, and with a bit of luck I’ll manage to bag myself an Intel iMac in the not too distant future to run it on too. I look forward with interest to hearing Apple’s next product announcements, and something tells me we’re not going to have long to wait…

First impressions of the new MacBooks

Fri, 4 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0100

I finally had the chance to finally get my hands on the latest Apple MacBooks in my local branch of Dixons — sorry, Currys.digital — and my initial impressions were very positive. Although I had already seen plenty of pictures and read the specs, which are very impressive, you can only really get a feel for something by actually using it, so for what it’s worth, here’s what I thought…

MacBook Pro

Very slick with a high quality finish and excellent build quality. I had previously thought these machines to be rather ugly compared to the older PowerBook models like the 15” 1.5GHz machine I’m currently using. This was mainly due to the excessively thick edge on the casing above the screen that houses the built-in iSight webcam, which seems out of proportion to the rest of the screen casing, but this doesn’t look at all bad when you see the machines ‘in the flesh’, so to speak. In fact, the 15” model looks very attractive with the thinner (just over 1 inch) thick casing gives the whole machine a very sleek and desirable look that just oozes quality. The 17” model is a little large for my taste, but if you’re looking for a fast desktop replacement machine that can easily be moved around, this is an excellent option and also rather good value for money when compared to similar spec machines in its class. Plus it’s a Mac, and so infinitely more enjoyable and easy to use. You could even use it to run Windows, although why you would want to do that I can’t imagine!

Although it’s difficult to judge performance from just clicking on a few apps, the new machines seemed very responsive and graphics performance was rock solid, as you might expect. The new LCD screens are extremely clear and bright with a relatively high (100 dpi) pixel density, which means lots of fine detail and a high (1440 x 900 or 1680 x 1050) resolution. However, I didn’t find that this adversely affected readability — in fact, quite the opposite with even small text looking sharp and easy to read from a distance due to the enhanced contrast and clarity. The quality of the built-in webcam is also very good, and certainly more than adequate for video-conferencing and portrait-style snapshots. Overall, a very nice machine, and a huge improvement on my second-generation aluminium PowerBook.

MacBook White

The new consumer laptops have quite a different feel to the ‘pro’ offerings. In place of the sleek aluminium casing is a shiny white polycarbonate version, reminiscent of the iPod and previous iBook models, or for an extra £120 you can get the rubberised matt black finish (below). In both cases the overall impression is one of a rugged and powerful laptop that is equally at home in a backpack or a briefcase, and doesn’t mind taking a knock or two (although whether the latter point is borne out in practice is a different matter). In any case, the resulting package is very attractive and inspires confidence, as well as being likely to turn a few heads in the classroom and boardroom alike.

The two most noticeable features of the new MacBooks are the screen, which is just over 13” in size and, unlike it’s larger brother, has a glossy reflective finish, and the keyboard. Like many other commentators, I’m dubious about the merits of the reflective screen as it introduces problems with reflections from sunlight or overhead lighting, but the improvement in picture quality and contrast is noticeable, and ideal for watching films, TV programmes and so on. However, I have to commend Apple on their choice of screen size, which gives the perfect balance between compactness and detail but without being overly pokey or restrictive. In fact, thanks to the increased pixel density, it’s got almost as much screen real-estate (1280 x 800) as my 15” PowerBook but in a smaller package that perfectly marries the cuteness of the old 12” iBook with the usability of the 14” model. Battery life is also very good with many users reporting 4 or 5 hours in everyday use.

The keyboard is an initially odd experience, with the keys having a noticeable gap between them, rather than the usual tapered appearance that has become customary on laptops. However, the resulting action is very positive and, if anything, the gaps improve typing accuracy by making it harder for your fingers to slip onto the next key, although it’s probably just as easy for biscuit crumbs and other detritus to fall down into the keyboard as with more conventional designs. As an experienced touch-typist, I give it a thumbs up, although again it’s difficult to tell without prolonged usage.

MacBook Black

For a £120 premium, you can get yourself a black MacBook, which is identical in every respect to the white model except for the casing. I find it rather cheeky of Apple to charge a premium for a different colour casing, which is obviously designed to appeal to business and power-users, but to their credit the resulting machine does give quite a different impression to the white version. The matt-black rubberised finish exudes quality and style, although does seem to show up fingerprints more easily — a fact which is offset by its increased resistance to scratches and other marks. Even so, I have to say that I actually prefer the white model, but I can see why many people would want to go for the matt finish, and wouldn’t be at all surprised if future releases of the MacBook black feature additional performance enhancements, such as a faster processor or non-integrated graphics card for improved gaming performance, to secure its position as the daddy of the MacBook family.

Conclusion

All of the above laptops are superbly designed machines and feature blazingly fast Intel Core Duo chipsets, with dual cores for enhanced multitasking performance. Now that Apple’s UK pricing is more aggressive than it used to be, coupled with the possibility of educational discount, which is approximately equivalent to the cost of the VAT, owning a Mac laptop is now relatively affordable and definitely worth consideration by anyone thinking of upgrading their. I must admit to being quite tempted to trade in my existing PowerBook for one of the new MacBooks, but would probably be more likely to go for a new 20” Intel iMac due to the larger screen and slightly higher specs.

The downside? Well, the entry level MacBooks are somewhat hampered by an integrated graphics processor, making it unsuitable for hard-core gamers. Also, the 15” MacBook Pro currently only features a single-layer 4Gb DVD burner rather than the dual-layer 8Gb version present in other MacBook models, and only supports Firewire 400 unlike its bigger brother, which has both Firewire 400 and 800 connectors. However, these are relatively minor niggles and, in the latter case, may be fixed in the near future with the advent of new, even faster 64-bit Core 2 processors and chipsets, which could be introduced into the Apple range as early as next week.

Overall, I would say that these new laptops represent extremely good value for money in terms of performance and longevity (my PowerBook G4 is still going strong after two years of intensive use). Professional users may want to wait until the Core 2 — aka ‘Merom’ — models becomes available later this year, which promise increased performance and battery life, but as a general purpose laptop you could certainly do a lot worse than the brand new MacBook. The iBook is dead, long live the MacBook!